Picture it this way, Cookie. Suppose that some other powerful nation, right now, had the power to cut off all the USA's overseas supplies of oil and certain other vital strategic resources, through a trade embargo....because they disagreed with the USA's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Suppose it was a big, heavily armed nation...a nation with the power to fight the USA on at least equal terms, if not better than equal.

Would the USA respond within less than a year by attacking that nation? Definitely. There would be a major war if someone cut off all the USA's foreign oil sources to pressure the USA into giving up on its wars in the Middle East. It would be a world war.

That's exactly what FDR did to the Japanese in 1941 in order to pressure them into giving up their war in China, and consenting to be nice little losers...and go home.

They were not going to do that. Like America, they were a proud nation. They were a nation that had not been defeated before by anyone. They would not give up and go home, they would fight...even though they knew that America could outproduce them by a huge margin when it came to building weapons of war.

FDR knew what he was doing. He drove them into a corner where it was inevitable that they would attack the USA's bases in the Pacific. In order to do so with any chance of success, they had to attack by stealth suddenly and without warning....as, for example, Israel did in the Six Day War in 1967.

Israel is not criticized by the USA for having done that. It is not called a "Day of Infamy" (except, no doubt, by the Egyptians and their Muslim allies). ;-)

You see, infamy is all a question of perspective...and propaganda.

Roosevelt arranged that war. His outrage over the Japanese attack was a nice act performed for public consumption, because the one thing necessary from Roosevelt's point of view was to ensure that the American public got DAMN mad at Japan...mad enough to be quite ready to all go out and fight Japan to the bitter end...and then it wouldn't be hard to get them to fight Germany too, which was the main thing Roosevelt wanted to happen. He regarded Germany as too dangerous for the USA to stand on the sidelines, and I'd say he was correct about that.

Hitler and Mussolini then did him the huge favor of declaring war on the USA by Dec 11th to show their friendship with Japan! That was a really stupid move on their part...but Hitler always did have a tendency to make the worst decisions when his emotions were involved.

The Japanese, on the other hand, were not stupid enough (or reckless enough) to return Germany that favor by attacking the Russians in the East....which they could have.

Wars are a matter of pragmatism. Great powers start wars for one of two reasons:

1. They think they can win a quick victory and gain something from it.

or...

2. They think they simply have no choice, because they've been pushed into a corner.

Japan hoped against hope to achieve Number 1 above...the quick victory, but they mainly did it because of reason Number 2. They figured they had no other choice. The word "surrender" was not in their vocabulary. And I don't think it's in the USA's vocabulary either, is it?

Roosevelt was a smart player. He got exactly what he wanted. The Japanese attacked, starting the war they couldn't possibly win, and the war that FDR wanted and needed.

It's like a game of chess. Everyone plays to win. If they can't win, they play to draw. If they can't draw, they still stretch it out to the bitter end, hoping for a miracle to save them...those hopes, for Germany and Japan, died in the ashes of Berlin and Hiroshima.

Why? For the simplest reason of all: gross national product. Their combined industrial output (including Italy's) could not possibly match the combined resources of the USA, the UK, and Russia. The side with the most money, men, ships, and aircraft won, as is generally the case.

The only country in the world right now that could seriously oppose the USA, in my opinion, is China. (and Russia maybe, to some extent) They are unlikely to do so, because the cost of such a conflict would not be worth it. They are far better off to just continue doing business as usual with America for the time being. Good thing too! You definitely don't want to see another world war, believe me...continental America is no longer a safe refuge beyond strategic bombing range of its potential enemies, as it was in the WWII era.